In Cherry Hill, NJ, Police Want Every Cash-for-Gold Sale Logged to Database
By Justin Udo
CHERRY HILL, N.J. (CBS) -- Authorities in Cherry Hill, NJ are trying to get cash-for-gold stores in that community to polish up the way they do business.
The cash-for-gold industry has surged in the last few years, and in Cherry Hill they've seen a more than 400 percent increase in new cash-for-gold stores in the last five years.
Now, township officials want to tighten up how business is done at these stores, to help crack down on transactions of stolen goods. They want businesses to report every transaction to police by computer.
Joshua Simkins, a manager at We Buy Gold in Cherry Hill, says the new system is going to take some getting used to.
"It's more time," he tells KYW Newsradio. "It's difficult in the sense that it's very limited. It's not really designed for our business. It's designed for more of a pawn shop business."
But, Simkins says, if done correctly the electronic transaction processing will benefit the stores and law enforcement alike.
"As long as everyone actually uses it, I think it will be fine," he said today. "(But) there are a lot of businesses that are not using it. They're just not submitting receipts. It becomes a toll on the businesses that actually use it, because we're the only ones being looked at (by law enforcement)."
